Cole Leads M. Swim Team to No. 22 Finish

Like the World Championships or the U.S. Olympic Trials, the NCAA championship is regarded as one of the fastest swim meets in the world. This year was no exception.

Olympians such as Southern California sophomore Erik Vendt competed March 22-24 to break 18 pool records and four American records at Texas A&M. The University of Texas won its second-straight NCAA title with 597.5 points, 140 points ahead of No. 2 Stanford.

The Harvard men's swim team (8-1. 6-1 Ivy) ended its stellar season with a 22nd -place finish at NCAAs to follow its sixth-straight conference win four weeks ago.

The Crimson had been ranked 19th going into the meet, and while individual times fell a bit short of what the swimmers had accomplished at December's Texas Invite, the team turned in impressive relay splits and remains positive about its NCAA performance.

Six of the Crimson's 30 team members participated in the meet.

True to his Ivy League swims, freshman John Cole's distance freestyle swims proved nothing less than awesome.

Cole placed fifth in the1,650-yard free, less than four seconds behind third-place Vendt. The swim places him as the fastest miler in Harvard history, if not the Eastern Conference, and was a new Harvard record (replacing that of Tim Martin '00 set in 1999).

Cole also placed 12th in the 500 freestyle, touching out Penn State junior Martin Schierhorn with a time of 4:19.56. The performance was also a personal-best for Cole and placed him just two-tenths of a second away from the school record. It was the first time since the Texas Invite that Cole had gotten proper rest.

Sophomore Dan Shevchik and senior Michael Im turned in explosive swims in the backstroke events. Im placed 14th in the 200 backstroke with a time of 1:45.41 while Shevchik, who swam the maximum three individual events, placed 19th. In addition to helping the medley relays, Im also sprinted to a 22nd-place finish in the 100 backstroke, touching at 48.59.

Shevchik, who holds the school record in the 400 IM, placed 13th in the event at NCAAs, clocking 3:48.75 to beat out Texas sophomore Miki Halika. Shevchik also took 27th in the 200-yard individual medley.

Covering the butterfly races for the Crimson was junior Kyle Egan. Egan just missed breaking his own school record as he swam to 23rd place in the100 fly, clocking 48.36. He also placed 35th in the 200-yard version of the event.

Freshman Rassan Grant represented Harvard in the breaststroke events, tying with senior Bryson Tan of Eastern Michigan to place 18th in the 100 breast-both swimmers clocked 54.91. Grant, who holds both the 100- and 200- breaststroke school records, placed 31st in the 200.

All Harvard's NCAA qualifiers teamed up to swim the medley relays. Most remarkable was the Crimson's 16th-place finish in the 400 medley. After tying for 16th place in preliminaries with Penn State, the team of Im, Grant, Egan, and Cole dropped 1.5 seconds to win the swim-off and advance to finals that night. The same team also placed 19th in the 200 freestyle relay.

Freshman sprinter Brad Burns made waves as he joined the team for the 200 medley, replacing Cole for the freestyle leg, clocking an impressive 19.95 en route.